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Foreigners

Don’t you just hate it when you make courteous and friendly overtures to someone just to have them rebuffed by aloof and cold responses, most of them borderline rude?

A little context: we moved into a shared housing arrangement a few months ago. Our biggest worry was, in fact, what kind of housemates would be we get? There are traditionally four rooms in an apartment, two of which can be used by a couple, which meant that at full capacity, we would have 3-4 others living with us in different rooms and sharing the facilities.

Now once we moved in, our fears were alleviated. We met a young man, studious and athletic, originally from South Africa. He was the friendly type that gets along with everyone and mostly spent his time out playing sports or at home quietly studying or taking in a movie on weekends.

We then met a bubbly young girl from a nearby town, who was extremely excited at having another girl in the place, surrounded as she was by two boys at the moment. Turns out, she was extremely chatty, had late shifts and enjoyed quiet times watching some TV shows on her laptop and cooking or cleaning on the side as a diversion. So far, so good.

The last flatmate was another young man, coincidentally at the same university as my husband. He was also Egyptian, and of the same religion, hence in theory much closer in relatablity to a Pakistani couple. However, as it turned out, the guy is an ass. He tends to hang out with his noisy friends all the time, not take his studies seriously, share his passkey to our flat with random friends, allowing them to enter our housing unit at random times of the night and goes away on vacation to his home country a good bit, allowing random friends to use his room while he is away. While we enjoy thoroughly the periods in which he is away (the place is so much quieter and less filled with random people milling about or coming in at will for no apparent reason) but when he finally came back, we decided to thaw out and give him another chance. Surely a fellow brown brother couldn’t be all bad? And if we can get along with a South African and an Australian, how could we not relate to an Egyptian guy? Turns out he’s still the same. And he’s back.

To summarize, we can’t wait till our lease is up at the end of the year and we can go back to living alone.